Before Star Trek, Patrick Stewart Was In A Classic '80s Fantasy Movie

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Sir Patrick Stewart, who died at 86 on Wednesday, spent seven seasons as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in "Star Trek: The Next Generation," which premiered in 1987 and is one of the sci-fi shows from the '80s that still hold up today. Stewart wasn't new to acting when he got the part, though. He had joined the Royal Shakespeare Company all the way back in 1966, and a few years before he was cast as Picard, he also showed up in one of the better-known fantasy movies of the '80s.

That movie is "Excalibur," director John Boorman's 1981 take on the legend of King Arthur, which is based on Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur." Stewart played Leondegrance, a lord and knight who ends up being one of the first people to back Arthur as king. He wasn't the lead, as that role went to Nigel Terry, with Nicol Williamson playing Merlin. But the rest of the cast is full of actors who went on to much larger careers, including Helen Mirren as Morgana, Liam Neeson as Gawain, and Gabriel Byrne as Uther Pendragon.

In "Excalibur," Leondegrance is one of several knights competing for a turn at the sword in the stone, and though he wins the first joust, he can't pull the sword free. Arthur can, though, and once he has the sword in hand, Leondegrance declares allegiance to the young squire even as "other knights suspect trickery." Leondegrance is Guinevere's father, too, and when Arthur's supporters are besieged at his castle, Arthur and Merlin travel there to help.

Now, Leondegrance isn't Picard, and a medieval castle is about as far from the bridge of the Enterprise as you can get. But it is easy to see Picard in his performance of Leondegrance, and the two characters are very similar in the way that they remain loyal to those they swear their allegiance to. With Leondegrance, that loyalty is to Arthur. However, with Picard, that loyalty is to his crew. In fact, one of the best examples of the loyalty he brings to life in his characters is when he stood up for Data after a scientist tried to take him away, seeing the android as property and not a being, and it's a big reason he's still considered one of "Star Trek's" best captains.

Stewart was also still very much a stage actor when "Excalibur" was made. He had been with the Royal Shakespeare Company since 1966, taking on leading roles there, and a year after "Excalibur" came out, he was playing Henry IV in the Barbican Theatre's opening season.

Stewart went back to "Excalibur" in 2019, when he was getting ready for "The Kid Who Would Be King," a movie about a young boy who finds King Arthur's sword. "I'd watched 'Excalibur' because that was the first large-scale movie that I was ever in," he said at the time, though he also thought the older movie was "a little bit more harsh, perhaps," than the new one.

Boorman had a lifelong fascination with King Arthur, and he had even written an outline for an Arthurian movie for United Artists before "Excalibur," which the studio wasn't interested in. When "Excalibur" did get made, it was shot in Ireland, and the cast and crew (horses included) trained for six months in medieval combat for it. The movie went on to win the Best Artistic Contribution award at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival and made close to $35 million in North America.

A few years after "Excalibur," Stewart played Gurney Halleck in David Lynch's "Dune", and by 1987 he was Captain Picard. That role became such a central part of his career that he even wanted to sue another sci-fi show for ripping off "Star Trek: TNG" when he first saw "Red Dwarf," though he ended up becoming a fan of the show instead. If you want to see Stewart as Leondegrance for yourself, "Excalibur" is free to watch with ads on YouTube right now, or you can rent it on Amazon Prime Video for $4.99.